>> this is "bbc newsnight." funding for this presentation is made possible by the freeman foundation of new york, stowe, vermont, and honolulu, newman's own foundation, and union bank. >> at union bank, our relationship managers work hard to know your business, offering and providing capital for key strategic decisions. we offer expertise in solutions

in a range of industries. what can we do for you? >> as the ecb finds ammunition for its bazooka, and revolution is brewing in spain. this week as europe tries to get its house in order, we meet a brave heart fighting a battle for financial freedom. >> the europe of the people. the europe of the wants to do not have anything. the unemployed. people who demand a new reality. >> and new evidence it may be too late to save our icecaps. >> the volume of ice and goes up in the winter and down in the summer. but it has been declining for

the last some 30 years. it is now at the lowest level since records began. the euro at any price? that seems to be the model of the head of the european central bank. mario draghi's plan is to buy bonds to try to stop those country's debt by becoming uncontrollable. unlike greece, there will be no punitive austerity measures. seems like spain and is concentrating his mind. it is there that as it is the greatest chance of a congregation. our economics editor is in madrid. >> this is a significant moment. there is a bailout fund for europe but is not enough to bail out madrid. they needed something bigger and that's something to print money

by the ecb and buy out the bonds of italy and spain and anybody else who gets into trouble on an unlimited basis. mariano rajoy, the prime minister will take a lot of convincing because the entire political system has been built on and not taking the bailout, and opposition to the kind of austerity already is growing as i have been finding out this week. there are parts of spain where it would like to make time co backwards. a small town, of course town. -- a horse town. the government is affectively boston needs a billion euros immediately.

-- bust and means of building euros immediately. there is an atmosphere of rising protest. last month, the workers' union began raiding supermarkets and taking away food without pain. -- paying. the food is given to the unemployed. the figurehead of this movement is a local mayor, the name and a beard instantly famous. now, he and his comrades are on the march. starring a protest from town to town under the eye of the police. determined to stop the austerity everybody knows is about to hit. for almost a month, the workers have been marching from town to town. as a lot of the things, there is

an element to symbolism. but things are about to get serious. a small farming town, it is clear that the spanish crisis and the way it is resolved will define europe. >> another europe is necessary. the europe of the people. the ones who do not have anything. the unemployed, people who demand a new reality. people to do not have anything. >> it is spectacular but spectacularly poor. the government had tried to soften the spending cuts but now it needs a bailout and a towel -- will have to have further cuts on to those already made. everybody here feels a crunch is coming. >> what we want to see changed

is criticizing the workers. many people are losing their homes. many people cannot afford to buy food. that is why we are reaching out to all parts of society. >> people do not want to hear about bailouts or angela merkel. people want to talk about the cost of a bottle of gas, petrow, madison, mortgages. expectations. they want to talk about their problems and that is what we do. >> in madrid, they know the move by the ecb opens the way for spain's debt to be bought on a massive scale, remove it -- removing the threat of imminent default. but is dependent on conditions and the conditions will be set in a struggle between these two, angela merkel, who needs spain to accept more austerity

to appease a german voters, and the spanish prime minister, mariano rajoy, who could not bring himself to ask for the bailout. >> of priorities of the government right now are to create jobs. the first priority is we have to continue on the path for cutting the deficit. the next is to continue the structural reforms and rebuild the banking sector. in the next few weeks, we will have more details on changes to the banking sector. >> even of the spanish people accept the conditions, the process has created cracks in the political system. >> there is a problem with the loss of credibility by the politico.cal class. you have to be closer to the people to know what is going on

in the streets. cut spending in a motor richard -- more transparent way. they have to tighten their belts. >> there are numbers of people who intends to prove that wrong. the they gave him a taste of the anger that will greet any bailout bill. it will not only be the radicals would sustain going bust one by one, this is said to have a huge protest organized by nationals. the fear is that this unites the left and right in opposition to the rescue plan of the political center. technically, the demonstrations of the past few years have achieved nothing but throughout that time, the government have had to insist spain will never go to that eu for a bailout and now they have to. for many, this is the start of

the fight against austerity. the mayor is about to find out whether rhetoric and civil disobedience to stop the spanish government, the bond market, and the ecb. the town he runs is a famous as a left-wing utopia. farmers fought for and won control of the land in the 1990's. they built their own houses. the town symbolizes one part of the dream that many spaniards brought, the social europe coexisting with the old conservative traditions. the spanish press has compared it to robin hood. he himself prefers the scottish rebel william wallace.

>> i think he was a true revolutionary. he came from the lower class and demanded change for his people. he was defeated, though. >> too well, your voice house winners and losers. -- well, you always have winners and losers. >> it is not in he and his utop politicians need to worry about. it is ordinary spanish people. the die is cast for a fall spanish bailout and the conditions will be no drastic changes to the way people live. their concern is obvious. >> somebody had to do something. there should be more like him. it is a beautiful place. we cannot go on this way with more and more unemployment. this region has so much in its

favor but we are coming increasingly poor. >> i do not respect his ideas but i respect him because he is a leader and you have to respect that. >> political leadership has been a problem. politicians have to lead an austerity drive that will bite into the incomes of voters and in places like this, the cut into the soul of local identity. the problems cannot be sidestepped any more. >> before the announcement, my colleague jeremy paxman spoke to larry summers, bill clinton 's treasury secretary and president obama's economic advisor joined us from harvard university in davis his view of how the crisis has been handled. >> larry summers, another decision date for the euro. to you think it has been well

managed to? >> this is not going to be a happy chapter in monetary history. i have often compared this to the vietnam war. american policy makers always did what was necessary to avoid immediate collapse and never did what was necessary to offer a prospect of a long run solution. eventually, the policy collapsed around it. >> let me ask you, do you believe in a year's time there will still be 17 members of the eurozone? >> there cannot be any guarantees. we do not what is going to happen. we do not what political conditions are going to permit in northern europe. we do not know what will happen with respect to on certain banking systems. but i think there is a proper

judgment and having made the commitment to the era, the right path forward is to try to live with it and do what is necessary to make it work. >> if the euro were to collapse, how big of a deal with that before the world economy? >> in ways that are more negative than has been true historical way and in ways that are larger than has been true for some decades. the fate of the global economy over the next several years rests with europe. europe does not have the capacity to be the promotion and that creates a global expansion. but europe does have the capacity to be in the shark that brings the global economy to a screeching halt. it is the reason why so much of

economic and financial diplomacy has centered, including the active involvement of the president of the united states and europe over the last year. >> you mentioned the president of the united states. when asked about his handling of the economy, he said he would give himself an incomplete grade. what would you give him? >> i think that is right. i think there was a prospect of a situation like the u.s. great depression in 2009. he looked at what happened when the president came into office, employment was falling, gdp was falling, stock prices were falling. all of it. exports were falling. all of it was falling more rapidly than in the fall of 1929. for all of the problems, we have had a different path with nothing like the kind of complete collapse of the economy

that u.s. saw after 1929. >> or just when you talk carbon dioxide was enough to worry about, scientists have told us of the appearance of arctic ice is a much greater contributor to global warming. that raises the question of why we should bother not -- jeremy paxman discuss that with a conservative who has written a new report on climate change and is the new leader of the british green party. but first he spoke to our science editor. >> we have known for some time that the arctic ice is melting at a rapid rate but new figures we have been given suggest that the impact is doubling mankind's contribution to climate change. when we first saw these beautiful shots from space, it triggered the green movement. 30 years since satellites

started observing the arctic in detail, that has changed. this is what it looked like in the summer of 1979. this is what it looked like in 2007, half of its eyes had gone. one of the leading scientists predicts that all of the ice could be gone in summer within a few years. this year there has been another big melt and we are still a few days away from the official minimum. he spent the summer on the arctic ice using lasers and robots submarines to get a picture of how much is left. he is also taking part in a bbc documentary series to be broadcast next month called operation iceberg. he had to dodge the curious polar bear. >> move along. >> he has seen for himself the

dramatic decline. >> 30 years ago, there were about 80 million square kilometers of ice left in the arctic in the summer. by 2007, it had gone down to 4 million and this year it has gone down before that and it is really heading for oblivion. >> ice is also getting thinner. the volume of vice naturally goes up in the winter and down in the summer. but that has been declining over the last 30 years. it is now at the lowest level since records began. estimates that the north wall could be ice-free in a few years contrast with the official view of the office that the arctic will not be completely free of ice before the summers of 2013. but it is the effect of losing all of that ice that matters.

the polar icecap acts as a parasol reflecting sunlight back into the atmosphere and. 30 years ago, the ice looks like this. covered 2% of the surface, reflecting most of the sun. but half of that has gone. it has opened more of the energy. the professor told as parts of the ocean are now as warm in summer as the north sea in winter. >> do you are replacing a bright surface, which reflects radiation, was a dark cellar -- surface that absorbs it. the difference is, it is the equivalent of 20 years of additional carbon dioxide being added. >> if his calculations are correct, over recent decades,

and the melting ice cap has put as much heat into the system as all of the co2 we have generated in that time. if the eyes continues to decline, the play a bigger role. he stresses there are uncertainties. cloud cover could change and help reflect some of the sun radiation. but another greenhouse gas trapped in the -- could make matters worse. all of which raises questions for both sides of the debate about how to respond to our changing climate. to the need a new manhattan project, ambitious engineering schemes to keep the planet will have? or does it reinforce calls for action to save the arctic by cutting carbon emissions?

>> the very question we want to discuss now with the new leader of the green party. and peter who has written a bottle of the findings on climate change. if that analysis is correct about what happened to the arctic and the consequences, there is little point in making any adjustments to our lifestyle they using to be suggesting. >> not at all. we can still make an impact in cutting are carbon emissions to. by doing that, we can act in ways that make our society better and stronger. we can invest in our future. we must do that now. we need to act and we need to act now. >> but if the effect of the melting ice cap is, that will make damn all the difference. >> what we want to do is bring

industries back into britain. >> that is another point. >> what we need to do is shorten our supply change and use less fossil fuels because they admit carbon emissions. >> if the damage is done, what is the point? >> we can reduce the damage if we act now. >> i was told to come on this program and not discussed the fines, to take the panel climate assessment as a correct projection of what the likely trends will be and i was happy to do that. instead you have presented something which purports to be new evidence which is not a peer-reviewed. the forecast is this, not what you have projected. it says sea ice will shrink in

the arctic and antarctic and that under all scenarios, in some projections, late summer ice disappears almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century. they then present a graph of the projections which none of them show it projecting -- melting during the summer. it used to melt from time to time in the 1930's. so you have a tendentious presentation by someone who is disagreeing with the science. not tohe bbc's policy broadcast anyone who thinks -- >> you think climate change -- >> i want to work on the basis of the science, not something concocted by the bbc in an alarmist fashion which is not. here. -- peer reviewed.

>> we cannot concoct something like that. >> it to just pass. -- it just has. >> he knows better than the three of us. >> not that i do. i think their assessment of the science is better than a professor's, who is an alarmist. >> we know that all the indicators of climate change, global warming, have moved faster than scientists predicted. everything has been at the upper end of projections. the fact is, what you represent are the last throes of a dying argument. >> he has accepted a climate change. >> the geological association of america talked about a new era

through human activity. >> there is no dispute whether something is changing in the climate. there is no dispute there. the question is, what needs to be done or what can be done? >> i think we need to project forward what is likely to happen on the basis of the best scientific evidence. and that is provided. and work out the economics. only do things for the costs are less to the benefits. that is what we should be doing. i have assessed the report and looking at it he says, even on his worst scenario, if we take the action he proposes, the costs will exceed the benefits for the first century. we're talking of doing something where any returns will accrue more than a century hence. should we be doing that? the green party may think so.

>> if you want to stop flying -- >> we do not want you to stop flying. >> let's be sensible. you are being unfair to the green party. >> what we would like to do is to localize our industries and bring farming back into the u.k., stop flying beans from kenya. we want to bring industry back into the u.k. all of these things will reduce our carbon emissions at the same time. then we have a say -- situation where people have lower bills and lower emissions. >> you think this outweighs the costs. >> kramer said. we condemn everyone a healthier life. let's look at the situations of the green business. the green economy accounts for

9% of the british economy. that is the same as the finance industry. 5% growth rate every year year on year. one-third of the growth in the u.k. came from grain industry. -- green indury. >> if we spend a lot on subsidies, we will get growth in those industries. if he spent a lot of money on building wind turbines, you'll get employment in erecting wind turbines and less in gas turbines. of >> will have to leave it there for the time being. >> hang on. i want to present the idea we should impoverished the people of kenya by stopping trading with them. and manifestly kroll -- >> i have to stop it there. >> that was jeremy paxman seeking to peter and natalie. that is all for us for this

week. goodbye. >> make sense of international news at bbc.com/news. >> funding for this presentation was made possible by the freeman foundation of new york, stowe, vermont, and honolulu, newman's own foundation, and union bank. >> at union bank, our relationship managers work hard to know your business. offering specialized solutions in capital to help you meet your growth objectives. we offer expertise and tailored solutions for small businesses

and major corporations. what can we do for you? >>

hi, i'm john davis and this is motorweek !